As technology progresses, wireless devices tend toward smaller sizes and wireless communications protocols become increasingly sophisticated. Support for multiple communications bands with wider bandwidths in a single device is becoming available. For example, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11n wireless communications standard specifies support for wireless communications using a first communications band between about 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) and about 2.4835 GHz, and a second communications band between about 4.9 GHz and 5.825 GHz. Therefore, the second communications band has a bandwidth of about 17.25%.
A wireless local area network (WLAN) access point may be installed in a hot spot to provide wireless access to end users. The WLAN access point may need to be compact for ease and flexibility of installation. Therefore, any radio frequency (RF) antennas installed in the WLAN access point may have significant size and dimension restrictions. For example, any RF antenna in a WLAN access point may be restricted in height to about 12 millimeters (mm). Additionally, the WLAN access point may be a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) WLAN access point, which utilizes multiple antennas. Therefore, the RF antennas in a MIMO WLAN access point may have additional size and dimension restrictions, and may need to be of reasonable cost. If a WLAN access point supports communications using the IEEE 802.11n communications protocol, an RF antenna in the WLAN access point may need to support the 2.4 GHz to 2.4835 GHz communications band, the 4.9 GHz and 5.825 GHz communications band, or both. Further, if a MIMO WLAN access point supports communications using the IEEE 802.11n communications protocol, one or more RF antennas in the access point may be a single band antenna for isolation from other bands, or one or more RF antenna in the access point may support two or more communication bands to minimize the number of RF antennas. Thus, there is a need for an RF antenna that is small, cost effective, wide bandwidth, dual band, or any combination thereof.